Best of Member Blogs: From Interactive Stories To Cheap Scare Tactics

In our weekly Best of Member Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game community who maintain Member Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. Our favorite blog post of the week will earn its author a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra's sister publication, Game Developer magazine. (All magazine recipients outside of the United States or Canada will receive lifetime electronic subscriptions.) We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. This Week's Standout Member Blogs - Some Definitions About Interactive Storytelling (Emanuel Montero Reyno) Discussion of interactive narrative and storytelling is nearly constant in game circles, but discussion is often vague. Here, software engineer and PhD student Emanuel Reyno attempts to nail down some succinct definitions and structures of various concepts surrounding interactive storytelling. For his effort, Emanuel will receive a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine. - I Like Motion Control / I Don't Like Motion Control (Jaime Kuroiwa) While gamers passionately discuss the merits and relative necessity of motion control (and console manufacturers that aren't Nintendo allegedly scramble to implement it more fully), little attention has been paid to how the growing trend affects the disabled. Jaime Kuroiwa considers the issue. - Putting horror back into horror titles. (Josh Bycer) Years of a trend of "horror" meaning "cheap scare tactics" may be devaluing the genre, argues Josh Bycer. One particularly interesting point raised deals with the dissonance between combat and horror: if you know the game expects you to be able to kill any enemy that comes at you, why fear it? - Game Pricing's Happy Spot (David R.) Are games too expensive? A lot of gamers understandably think so -- after all, no other form of mass media entertainment, be it literature, film, or music, costs $50 to $60 a pop for the "standard" experience. David R. chips in his thoughts, and a hefty comment thread results. - The difference between dreaming and designing (Josh Bycer) Design may be one of the more ambiguous game development disciplines, but it still requires solid execution. In another blog post, Josh Bycer reflects on that crucial distinction between the vagaries of imagining and the reality of designing.